The present invention relates to meta models, and more specifically to recognition of and support for multiple versions of an enterprise conical message model at design and runtime.
Support of a conical message model within an enterprise is an important part of software architecture design pattern of service oriented architecture. By standardizing a common message model across the messaging infrastructure and using this message model to define the service definition, the level of complexity inherent in integration as an enterprise transforms to be more service oriented is greatly reduced. Thus, an enterprise can transform from complex and unwieldy point to point integrations across different service definition and message models to a much more scalable hub and spoke architecture where the conical enterprise message model is standardized.
Often times there is need for support of different versions of the canonical message model. Typically for an enterprise message mode, an enterprise will standardize on some industry vertical message model. Typically this is a “point in time” decision and the enterprise will standardize on a particular version of the message model. However, over time the message model will change as new features are added. The enterprise cannot compensate for the different versions of the message models.